Oddball Plants in Montana

I’ve been walking and observing the trails in the greater Helena area for long enough now to know when and where I wam likely to come across some of our less common flowers. Our fairy-slippers and lady-slippers, as well as the slender rein- and bog orchids, tend to occur in small clusters rather than being widespread like, say, arrowleaf balsamroot in early June. I started to wonder why that is the case.

I started looking around the internet, referencing iNaturalist, and reading a bit. The answer is, of course, decently complex. What follows is what I’ve learned.

Generally speaking, we tend to categorize the natural world into neat, reliable boxes, probably because it makes the true complexity of the wild much easier to digest. From our earliest lessons, we are taught that plants are solar panels: stationary, green, and powered by the sun. Using the sun, they make food and give off oxygen. It is a tidy, logical story that allows us to feel like we understand the basic machinery at work.

The truth, however, is that nature rarely operates in such clearly binary terms. If we look more closely at the forest floor or fringe of a bog, we find that it is not merely a stage for photosynthesis; it is a crowded, competitive, and sometimes bizarre marketplace where the standard rules of “solar power” are occasionally bent or even ignored. Montana has a clandestine group of species that thrive despite having opted out of the solar economy in favor of strategies that range from nutrient theft to carnivory.

Let’s define some terms, then introduce the players:

• Myco-heterotrophs: These plants steal nutrients from fungal systems that live underground.
• Holoparasites: These plants steal nutrients directly from green plants.
• Carnivores: These plants capture and digest insects.
• Symbionts: These plants both give and take in a cooperative relationship.

Let’s start with orchids. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center has an excellent section on the symbiosis between orchids and fungi. Montana is home to more than 30 species of orchids. They range from the showy, almost tropical-looking fairy-slippers to small, spiky understory plants like Alaskan rein orchids.

To begin their life cycle, orchids are fully reliant on underground networks of fungi called mycorrhizae. Orchid seeds require mycorrhizae to infiltrate and feed them; otherwise, the seeds remain nothing more than dusty granules. Once the orchid matures and begins photosynthesizing, there is believed to be some degree of nutrient sharing back to the fungi.

This is an excellent example of a symbiotic relationship, showcasing a green plant that buys into the solar power system after being jump-started by underground fungi.

Now let’s look at coralroots, which are also considered to be orchids. The coralroots are true myco-heterotrophs. They operate completely free from chlorophyll. Instead, they siphon their nutrients directly from the underground mycorrhizal network.

As a result, coralroots are typically leafless, appearing as red or reddish-brown, spike-like flower stalks with very small petals. The petals are often pink or white with bright red or purple spots to attract pollinators.

Then we have a few parasitic plants like pinedrops and broomrapes. Fully lacking chlorophyll, pinedrops tap into the mycorrhizae attached to the roots of a ponderosa or western white pine tree, stealing the nutrients that originated from the tree’s own photosynthetic work. The presence of pinedrops is usually an excellent indicator of a mature, relatively undisturbed forest environment.

Broomrapes, on the other hand, are obligate parasites that attach directly to the roots of our dryland plants like sagebrush, buckwheat, sunflowers, or milkweed and obtain the nutrients created by the host plant

I’ve only come across a broomrape once, but I always keep my eye out for them in the more arid areas where I walk.

Lastly, there are a few carnivorous plants in Montana. The sundew family and the butterworts are terrestrial plants. There are three species of sundews and one species of butterwort native to Montana. In the water, we have bladderworts- four species of free-floating plants that filter-feed on tiny organisms in still water.

I am hopeful that I will be able to get photos of some of our carnivorous plants soon, but so far I have none.

Anyway, as springtime has turned into summer, I have been seeing more of the wonderful oddball plants that eschew the standard solar methods of our dominant green plants. I just wanted to share this info in case someone else was curious.

As my youngest daughter likes to say when s he learns something new, “Huh. Well, the more you know!”